Abstract

Fear of the late modern world has been a major factor in the rise of authoritarian and violent religio-political movements. This article draws on Anthony Giddens andCharles Taylor’s conceptualisation of the self in the secular age, and applies this to two modernist religious trends originating in the East in the later nineteenth century in the context of western global expansion. Endeavouring to rise to the challenge of accommodating Islam to modernity by adopting the tools of rationality and encouraging independent inquiry, Islamic Modernism has become increasingly embattled. The Baha’i faith, a movement that incorporates similar perspectives and also developed out of an Islamic context, proposes a theophanic transformation rather than renewal through reform of Islam. After a period of infusion of a progressive catalytic impulse into the Middle East,the Baha’i faith performed its own recalibration of modernism, enunciating apocalyptic denunciation of the modern world similar to that found in Muslim revivalist trends. The article ends by making some suggestions for continuation of a progressive religious approach in late modernity.